Highland Elementary Mural with students

Hi Everyone!

As promised, I'm slowly getting current - sharing stories about older projects. This is a mural I made in collaboration with three ambitious and passionate 4th grade teachers, and three classrooms full of young minds, in Gresham, Oregon. If you're been following me for a bit, you might remember this project from last year. Yep, same school - but different hallway and different kiddos.

About 5-ish years ago, I was a Teaching Artist with Lane Arts Council in Eugene. I would go into schools and make murals with students. Sometimes with one classroom and sometimes with every kid in the school. It was a ton of work. And it wasn't quite a way to make a living. But I suuuure do miss it sometimes! I've been trying to do one of these volunteer projects per year, to get my fix. Read on, to learn how we made this year's mural.

I think my philosophy on mural-making with kids, stemmed partially from the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps' approach to international and community development was drilled into me from my years as a peace corps volunteer. You enter a community (in this case, the school/classroom) to do a project (mural), and you must first get buy-in from them if the project is going to go well. A good recipe for community development, and for getting kids on your side when doing murals together, is to INVOLVE them, rather than tell them what they should do. It works like this: Kids help you decide what to paint, and why. Therefore, they CARE. Therefore, they are PERFECT ANGELS for you while you paint (this was certainly the case during the last two murals I did in this school, where I was adamant about this process.) Therefore, they treat the mural with respect and pride when it's finished, and build some self-confidence in the process. While painting the mural, I try to keep my hands off it, save for fixing minor drips and splashes. But I'm not gonna go in and render out a perfect flower, over the top of one that five kids created together over the course of an hour. Kids make it = kids take pride in it.

Here is how we made a mural design with three classrooms full of kids. I asked the three teachers to come up with a very broad theme that we could use to prompt the kids to think of imagery. They chose this quote by Gandhi: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." The teachers had also been talking a lot about the idea of "using our voices." Pretty broad, right? But timely. Important. Big. Each kid was assigned to write and draw about what this means to them. I then took all of those assignments, and checked for re-occurring imagery, or words that could become imagery. Here's what came up:

Kids expressed using their voices through:

Art (fitting, right?)
Music
Writing
Kindness and anti-bullying
Speech/activism - this came up a lot in various forms. Some kids even specified: Black Lives Matter, immigration rights, "love is love", etc.
Keeping their environment clean and "green"
Learning and school

Imagery that came up a lot:
Hearts
rainbows
Hand-holding
kids playing
All skin colors
Protesters/marching/sign holding

My job then, was to try and synthesize all of that into one cohesive design, which is what we painted. Before getting our brushes wet, I talked with the kids about the power of "using our voices" through art (because that's what I know best.) I showed a powerpoint, and talked about how muralists like Diego Rivera were able to express some pretty powerful ideas through making public art. I talked about some murals I made in Madagascar, and how they helped teach folks in areas where literacy rates were low. That's the power of using our voices. So, the kids were already empowered about the idea of using their "voices" to show the rest of the school community how they felt. And that again, is the Peace Corps way.

On painting days, I lead about 5 kids out into the hallway at a time, and give them each a paint color and a place to put it. We work in layers - the first layers are purely just covering the wall. The subsequent layers leave more room for expressive mark-making and more careful technique practice. In the end, all of the kid have put a mark or 30 on the mural. And believe me, they remember EXACTLY where they are afterwards. It's so fun! The teachers even captured it on video this year, and made this gorgeous time-lapse! Love. Bucket = filled.

Forestry Court Apartments Mural

Hi everyone!

In my mission to post about a backlog of projects, today I'm sharing a very Northwest-y mural. This project came about when I was asked to paint something on the walls of an apartment building's lobby. This building is located in Northwest Portland, close to Forest Park - a lush backdrop of forest covered hills over the city's west side. The name of the apartments - Forestry Court - and it's proximity to actual forest, inspired a pretty obvious choice for the mural's imagery. The lobby is fairly dim, with little natural light, so I knew that I wanted to infuse a bit of "daylight" into the mural. A whole lot of Indian Yellow helped me create an illusion of that magic "golden hour" feel. It's that time of day when the sun is getting ready to start setting, and there are long shadows on the ground, and everything turns, well, golden. We knew we wanted to cover all of the available walls in the room, which was one large and prominent wall, plus two tall and narrow walls to the sides. Though there were hallways cutting through between the walls, I wanted them all to work together to create one cohesive piece. Then, the viewer's imagination could then fill the empty spaces between. 

I always enjoy the challenge of making it look like light is shining through the leaves on a tree. That almost-neon green that is formed by a back-lit leaf is so juicy and bright to look at in the natural world. Hard to capture in a painting, but worth trying. 

Once the main walls were done, I waited for a warmer day to paint some areas in the outside entryway. I figured just some greenery would help beautify the empty spaces in the tiling, and serve as a preview to what you'll see when you enter the building. 

I remember painting this in such a "flow" state - almost a trance. Nature is something I'm pretty darn used to painting by now, so it doesn't require a whole lot of thought - at least not conscious thought. When painting this kind of subject matter, what it really requires of me, is to turn off my conscious thought process, and just let my hands do their thing. It's projects like this, when I will listen to podcasts and audiobooks, to keep my mind occupied while my hands do the work. More complicated projects require more thinking (architectural or geometric work is like this). Does this make sense? It's just one of those things I've come to learn and nurture about the way my brain works.

This project totally inspired me to paint something like this in my home. I want a forest wall! Or door, or garage door, or kitchen. My house only has one mural so far - another project on the list to share. More to come!

Hope you enjoy the pictures and video of this fun forest-y mural!

How and why am I a Graphic Designer - Story time!

Hi everyone!

Another quarter of the year has passed, blog-less. I'm really going to try and change that habit, and do more creative things that feel good. Writing about my life and current projects is one of those things. 

I want to write about my Day Job today. My J.O.B. My 9-5. If you follow me here and not in real-life, you may just know me as a muralist/art teacher type. But I am also a Graphic Designer. This is the story of how I became one.

Looking back at my life, as soon as I discovered that you could create art in digital spaces as well as traditional analog ones, I was IN TO IT. When I was a kid, I would get on our little box-y black and white mac computer so that I could play Kid Pix, and drag around those digital brushes that would paint different patterns onto a blank canvas. It was so fascinating to me. I was a teenager in high school when I began (wildly... WILDLY) experimenting with Photoshop. I made a fake magazine about the pop-metal and alternative rock bands I was into at the time - complete with multi-page articles and music reviews (written by yours truly) and ads for fake products. All in Photoshop, with roughly 1 MILLION layers (cringe). As an angsty 16 year old, it was my digital masterpiece. In college, I took a few introductory graphic design and pre-press courses where I learned layout softwares like Quark Express and InDesign. I took a digital illustration class which opened my eyes to the complex world of Adobe Illustrator (and the pen tool I dreaded so much) and Corel Painter. It was incredible to me to be able to zoom in 200% and correct such tiny details in a piece of art. It was magic.

Despite all of that early interest, Graphic design was something I came to fairly recently in my life. A few years ago, after growing tired of the less-than-lucrative hustle of freelance and short teaching contracts, I came to Graphic Design in pursuit of a "safety net" during a move to the Big City. I viewed Design as a creative, yet reliable means to support my life and side business as a muralist. It was a practical and deliberate decision, satisfying my Taurus need for some desperately-needed stability. 

Being a Taurus also means I am stubborn, strong-willed and independent. Those traits have been both strengths and weaknesses in my life. Looking back, I think they kept me from pursuing this career as a younger adult. See, my Dad was a Graphic Designer. In college, I didn't even see that path as an option. I wanted to explore a path that was fiercely, uniquely, MINE. I chose my college major quickly, and stuck to it: Illustration with an Emphasis in Animation. I liked the idea of working at a Pixar-type studio, and making character designs and backgrounds (everything BESIDES actually animating, which I soon discovered I did not have the patience or passion for.) After graduating college, I put those plans on hold and joined the Peace Corps.

Peace Corps consumed my life for a good 3+ years. I was only actually living in Madagascar as a Peace Corps Volunteer for a total of 27 months, but a forced evacuation paused my service for 9 months of chilling on my parent's couch. I then went back to complete year 2 of my service. After coming home finally, I found myself reeling mentally and emotionally with the struggle of re-entry to life in the U.S. But I needed cash. Immediately. I went back into food service (sigh). I then worked my way into a sort-of-kind-of-regular job contracting at different K-12 schools, teaching kids art and making murals with them as an Artist-in-Residence, with commissioned mural jobs on the side. I took stock of my career goals and did some deep soul-searching. I reached out to a former professor for advice, and learned I needed to narrow my focus. Trying to keep ALL of the doors open, was preventing me from walking through any of them. I made a pro/con list, and a priority matrix (a tool I learned in Peace Corps. Need to decide something? See p. 43 of this document.) I entered so many interests and options into the matrix: Illustrator, Muralist, Tattoo artist, etc. Graphic Designer? Still not one of them. I decided that being a Muralist was what I really wanted to focus on. That hustle was HARD for me, and I soon realized I could not support myself that way full time, in that size town. So, a move! And then to facilitate that move, a job! What kind of creative job could be so "normal" that I would have it by the time I arrived in the city? Graphic Design finally appeared in a real way. 

I spent a few months refreshing and re-learning design skills and software I hadn't used since college. I watched hours of online tutorials and made myself a little web portfolio. That finally landed me an entry-level design job at a non-profit in Portland. From there I moved into the private sector, and now I've landed in the public sector. Working as an in-house designer has lead me to learn in-depth about industries I never would have otherwise: religious private school, fitness facilities, "green" and "eco" conference and event planning, aviation data sales, and now, criminal justice and community supervision and treatment. I have learned to code a bit, and so many new tools and programs. Graphic Design has lead me places I never would have imagined for myself. And I still have my other love on the side - murals. It's so satisfying to be able to pick up a brush, after days of clicking a mouse. It's the same creative drive - the same language, but a different dialect. 

Now that I'm in my 30's and doing this work, I realize that Design was always something I loved. Like that Taylor Swift song about her unrequited love story. Graphic Design was always there waiting for me, she just needed me to grow up and into myself a little more. Thanks Dad, for the genes. 

My Dad's book of Pantone swatches from the 1970's.
I have it on my desk at work as a reminder of where I came from.

xoxo, Corie